Floods Sakaja dared dampened his bragging rights
Age comes with wisdom, they say. After spending close time with my now late grandfather, the adage made more sense.
While inspecting a family house under construction one evening, he told me a story about the lizard. We had not spotted any at the site, though.
Midway through the story, he paused and asked me ‘why do lizards tend to look up buildings or cliffs and nod heads?’ I did not have the answer.
He explained that one day the reptile fell flat on her tummy from atop a taller building than the one we were inspecting. She survived, but shuttered her smooth back skin and fractured all her four limbs.
She also lost consciousness for a while and on coming back to her senses, she looked around and there was no one to sympathise with her for surviving what would otherwise be a fatal incident! She looked sideways, upwards, sideways again then upward and was convinced it was really a height.
And because no one seemed to notice or concur with her, she resorted to nodding in self-praise. It has always done so to date.
Moral of the story? There are times you don’t wait for those around you to recognise or commend you for personal achievements. Some will even want to discourage you from progressing in the right path.
Now, Nairobi Governor Johnson Sakaja pulled the lizard on Jamhuri Day, a month ago. After opening Nairobi’s clogged sewer and water drainage lines, and perhaps on noticing ‘no one recognised’ it in public, he seized the opportunity to brag how it had rained heavily and Nairobi, unlike in the past, did not flood.
Truth be told, Sakaja has tried. He has excelled where his predecessors failed. In the same breath, the governor must be reminded the responsibility squarely falls on his docket, and for doing it, he should not expect to be praised.
That his predecessors could not do the same with similar success, means he’s a cut above the rest but should not compare himself with them (the worst).
However, while blowing his own trumpet, Sakaja forgot that unclogging the lines isn’t a one-off event.
Barely a month after taking to the podium with own congratulatory message, as if to ridicule him, it rained in Nairobi, and the CBD and several estates flooded on Thursday, Friday and Saturday! Sections of the CBD roads and pathways were impassable and people had to use trolleys and boda boda to cross roads. It had also happened a week earlier.
The good governor must know the work isn’t done yet; he should not unfold the sleeves and resign to comfort zone. It’s a continuous exercise.
To make it even easier for his team, Sakaja may consider establishing a helpline for city residents to report clogged drainage systems for action. In line with his slogan, let Sakaja seize the opportunity to ‘make Nairobi work’ (clean and great). It’s possible. It’s doable. Over to him!
Last week this column pointed out some glaring faults in the CBC education system and readers had the following to say: “Mr Mulei, you really understated the confusion.
Now the children are back in school and not learning coz the subjects were reorganised and no coursebooks have been developed and distributed to schools more than a week after opening,” Bernedit Kyalo, a parent from Machakos.
Another identified as Willy ([email protected]) said: “They didn’t reduce the subjects. They just merged them. Same workload. Total confusion.”
[email protected] wrote: “CBC is for the poor. The rich take their children to international schools which rejected CBC.” [email protected] said: “In fact, 8-4-4 had no problem. Its only problem was the politicos’ interests. Soon we may witness fundamental changes to CBC just to accommodate the decision-makers’ interests.”
Mr Kiarie Mondu, a secondary school teacher in Nyeri, wrote: “Former Education CS Amina Mohamed was right…we were not ready for the CBC launch and implementation. It needed time for planning and piloting before execution.
That’s what curriculum development process prescribes.”
— The writer is Production Editor at the People Daily
